I am not sure about lettuce but tomatoes are self pollinated. Bees help but that is one crop that can survive without them.

Well American tomatoes may be 'special' but certainly in Europe all the glasshouse tomatoes have specially bred boxes of bumblebees brought in - one for each row of tomatoes - just to pollinate them. This costs $millions - so I assume they are not doing it just for fun. If they could find a way to self pollinate them - I assume they would not spend good money on breeding millions of bumblebees?

I am familiar with how the ban on neonic coated seed produced a dramatic increase in Honeybee survival in nortern Italy.

I'm also familiar with the continued Honeybee decline in regions where neonics are sprayed on foliage.

I understand that these synthetics (?) are deadly. What about natural nicotine, from natural tobacco? The stew made from tobacco, habaneros, and Dawn detergent seems to be effective with squash bugs (I carefully shielded the flowers when I sprayed the leaves).

08-03-2011, 04:23 PM

borderbeeman

Re: The perfect murder - no trace left behind

Quote:

Originally Posted by KelpticFest

Any info on the difference between these nicotinoids and nicotine per se?

Nicotine definitely kills insects very effectively; you can buy 'horticultural tobacco' in big bundles and soak a handful in water - it makes a great spray for aphids and caterpillars on garden crops. Some beeks have tried putting a small amount of tobacco in a smoker and smoking the bees with it for a few seconds. It knocks varroa down very easily- but if you use too much it can stupefy the bees as well.

Neonics are a 'high tech' version of nicotine and work by 'blocking' (hyper-stimulating) the neurons in the bees' brain. The neurons use a neuro-transmitter called acetyl choline. My layman's understanding is that in a healthy bee - the neuron can 'fire' hundreds of times a second, but between each nerve pulse, the 'switch' is turned off. Neonics act on the neuron by blocking the OFF switch and thus turning it permanently 'ON'. The result is that the bee is hyper-stimulated all the time - to the point where it cannot function.
One theory is that when ALL the neurons are firing all the time - this takes all the energy that the bee can produce - and the immune system collapses in a similar way to humans who were 'shell shocked' in WWI. So the bees die of bacteria, viruses, fungus disease - the analogy would be AIDS - which also destroys the immune system.

Henk Tennekes is a Dutch Toxicologist who has written a book called "The systemic insecticides - a disaster in the making' in which he describes in detail how the neonics cripple the nervous system of the bee even at fantastically low doses.

OK - but I'm NOT dealing with the "neonics" at all, at least not intentionally. The spray I brewed up seems effective, so I'd like to go on using it. I won't smoke the ladies with nicotine - the gardens where I've sprayed are over 75 feet from the hives, and I protected the blossoms. I just need to know if inadvertent contact with sprayed leaves is going to hurt my girls.

08-03-2011, 05:04 PM

WLC

Re: The perfect murder - no trace left behind

What's interesting to note here, is that I'm a user of horticultural nicotine. I use it to keep the bed bugs away. (although I haven't seen any.)